Maurice Ainsworth sentenced to six life terms in Santa Cruz rampage, Summit home invasion

SANTA CRUZ -- Maurice Ainsworth was sentenced Thursday to more than six life terms in prison in a 2009 home invasion and a 2010 rampage in which he shot a sheriff's deputy with a stun gun and held a gun to the head of a preschool teacher.

Ainsworth, 27, was sentenced in a special courtroom in Santa Cruz County Jail in part because of his escape and a recent plot to shank a jail guard and flee, prosecutors said.

Ainsworth was convicted in January on 39 felony charges, which included attempted murder, resisting arrest, burglary, kidnapping, false imprisonment and others.

In an emotional hearing that included statements from victims and the deputy, Judge Paul Burdick sentenced Ainsworth to 138 years and four months in prison followed by six life sentences, prosecutor Celia Rowland said.

Rowland argued for a stiffer sentence.

"Those were planned, purposeful and vicious crimes that he committed," Rowland said in an interview. "His case traumatized the entire community."

Ainsworth had been in Santa Cruz County Jail in November 2010 awaiting trial in home invasion case when he escaped from a deputy during a trip to Dominican Hospital for an MRI.

He escaped from the deputy, stole her stun gun and shot her in the head with it, prosecutors said. Still wearing jail clothes, he then took her handgun and fled to a preschool on a nearby street. He broke in and demanded car keys from a preschool teacher at gunpoint.

She gave him the keys, but he never took the car, instead fleeing into a nearby neighborhood.

As authorities swarmed the area looking for him, Ainsworth held a Russian couple hostage in their son's home for two hours.

That afternoon, a K-9 unit found Ainsworth in an upstairs bathroom of a home on the 100 block of English Drive.

At the sentencing hearing Thursday, Ainsworth said he wanted to "apologize to everybody that I hurt."

Rowland said it was first time Ainsworth had mentioned remorse.

"That was the first time he's acknowledged anything he did," Rowland said.

Deputy Cathy Bramanti, the sheriff's deputy whom Ainsworth stunned and bit during the escape, told a local TV station that she appreciated that Ainsworth "at least acknowledged to me that he made a mistake."

She has not been able to return to work. Also at the sentencing hearing, a letter was read from a teacher at the preschool who now doesn't feel safe leaving her daughter alone. Rowland said many of the victims had lasting psychological trauma in the wake of Ainsworth's rampage.

At the time of his escape, Ainsworth was facing charges in a violent 2009 home invasion in which he and another man stormed into a Summit area home, tied up a family of three and stole guns, jewelry and liquor.

Ainsworth is expected to be transferred to San Quentin State Prison in the next week. From there, the state Department of Corrections will decide where he is incarcerated.